Minnesota

Yesterday’s New York Times featured Scott Shane’s long page-one article “From Minneapolis to ISIS: An American’s path to jihad.” Shane explores the departure of Abdi Nur from Minneapolis to join ISIS in Syria. Nur comes from the Twin Cities’ large and still growing Somali community. Shane wanders off to discuss the cases of others who have left the United States to sign on with ISIS. Here is the local angle: »

The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 enjoyed unanimous bipartisan support when it was passed out of committee with the sponsorship of Senators Cornyn (R, TX) and Klobuchar (D, MN). Senator Klobuchar’s operative principle is “keep your head down” and it has served her well so far. Nevertheless, something funny happened on the way to passage of the bill in the Senate. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kim »

Yesterday’s Star Tribune featured Kim Ode’s profile of former Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Erwin Marquit. Marquit is dying and Ode is fawning. The source of Ode’s attraction to Marquit is Marquit’s run for governor in 1974 as a Communist. The romance of Communism hasn’t worn off for Ode or her editors at the Star Tribune. Ode’s profile is “Erwin Marquit, state’s best-known Communist, reflects on his life.” I’m sure Ode is »

Joanne Chesimard/Assata Shakur was a member and leader of the cop-killing Black Liberation Army. In 1973 she participated in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in which Trooper Werner Foerster was murdered and Trooper James Harper seriously injured. In 1977, she was convicted of the first-degree murder of Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the shootout. Chesimard escaped from prison in New Jersey and has been on »

Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison has blocked me on Twitter, so I am unable to follow him. Searching Twitter to take a look at his emissions, however, I found that Star Tribune political reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger has posted an Ellison fundraising letter that she received in which Ellison draws on my Star Tribune op-ed column “Rep. Keith Ellison remembers to forget.” Ellison’s letter responds to these two paragraphs of »

In “For Rep. Keith Ellison, recent protests speak to a lifelong struggle,” the Star Tribune’s Allison Sherry provides an incoherent update on Ellison’s fraught relationship with law enforcement. There are two problems with the article. Sherry doesn’t know what she’s talking about and she simply provides a platform for Ellison to vent. Sherry works to suggest that there is something complicated about Ellison’s views of law enforcement. She writes, for »

I’ll be speaking this morning at the monthly meeting of the Metro Republican Women in suburban St. Paul. I think this will be the fourth time I’ve spoken to them. They are one of my favorite groups. I’ll be speaking about my coverage of Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison on Power Line in what turned out to be the 2006 series “Who is Keith Ellison?” and in the October »

I bought and read Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison’s My Country, ‘Tis of Thee within a few days of its publication this past January. The book is Ellison’s memoir, written for a national audience. I bought and read the book upon publication because I was interested to see how Ellison would deal with his background as a local activist on behalf of the Nation of Islam. I wrote up »

John observes that in Minneapolis “The liberals are revolting.” It’s a general truth but, in Minnesota, we have a bad case of it. I happened to be heading south on Highway 35W out of downtown Minneapolis at mid-afternoon yesterday when I saw the roving band of ladies and gentlemen of the idiotic left marching north. They accompanied themselves with the the mindless “I can’t breathe” chant. I found the chant »

When you read that men from Minnesota have been indicted for aiding the Islamic State — as in the Hill headline “Two Minnesota men charged with aiding ISIS,” or in the Star Tribune headline “2 Minneapolis men charged with attempting to aid terrorists,” or in the local FOX News affiliate headline “2 Minnesota men charged with ISIS support” — you can be pretty sure that we’re talking about first or »

A cafeteria food fight turned into a riot at South High School in Minneapolis in February last year. The school’s security officers were insufficient to the task. Police officers dispatched to the scene sprayed mace and placed the school on lockdown to get a handle on the situation. Three or four students and a staff member ended up in the hospital. What was all the excitement about? The Star Tribune »

Jumping on the lefties’ pro-Communist 1980′s wave with perfect timing, Minneapolis named Novosibirsk its sister city in 1988. The Soviet Union promptly disintegrated. Well, forget Novosibirsk. Yesterday the Minneapolis City Council designated the Somali port of Bosaso as its sister city. The Star Tribune reports this awesome development here and the excitement is palpable. Somalia has undergone much adversity over the past 20 years. It is in already in an »

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style. Yet Minnesota’s Somali community (“Minnesotans”) have proved the most fertile ground »

President Obama is not popular at this point in his presidency, even in a blue state like Minnesota. Our own Senator Al Franken repeatedly bristled as GOP candidate Mike McFadden cited Franken’s 97 percent voting record in support of Obama at their debate in Duluth earlier this week. Franken mocked the statistic but didn’t offer a correction. That’s because the statistic is correct and because any purported correction would be »

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style. Yet Minnesota’s Somali community — a/k/a “Minnesotans” — is the most »

Our chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition saluted retiring Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann this past Sunday night. Since her election to Congress in 2006 — she first spoke to us that December, before she took office — Michele has been our favorite speaker. By my count, this was at least her sixth appearance before us. No one else comes close. We are grateful for her heartfelt and eloquent support »

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Minnesota’s Somali community — a/k/a “Minnesotans” — is the most fertile ground in the United States for the recruitment of terrorists by foreign terrorist organizations in Africa and the Middle East. The Islamic State is only the latest terrorist group to zero in on Minnesota to expand its ranks, »